# 24 Sergei Millian and Donald Trump's Russian Laundromat (2008)
In 2016, Trump repeatedly asserted that he had nothing to do with Russia. In fact, he not only had plenty "to do” with Russia, his financial survival depended on it.
Back in 2016, in a little-noticed interview with ABC News, Belarusian-American businessman Sergei Millian claimed that Donald Trump’s business ties to Russian investors were worth “hundreds of millions of dollars.”
Millian, about whom I wrote in a previous post for the Trump Russia Timeline post(#20 Trump Markets His Brand in Moscow (2007), is a shadowy figure who has hovered around the Trump-Russia story for years. He met Donald Trump in 2007 at the Moscow Millionaire’s Fair.
In his ABC interview, Millian described a 2008 meeting with Trump and Michael Cohen that, if true, would provide even more evidence connecting Trump’s real estate empire to the massive inflow of Russian capital:
“Trump’s team, they realized that we have lots of connection with Russian investors. And they noticed that we bring a lot of investors from Russia. And they needed my assistance, yes, to sell properties and sell some of the assets to Russian investors.”
At the time, Trump had all but stopped developing luxury high-rises, and instead licensed his name to real estate groups such as Bayrock who developed the buildings as part of their “Trump Tower” franchise and allowed Trump to rake in a sizable share of the profits.
These deals were extraordinarily attractive to Trump, who had already had multiple bankruptcies, in that they provided a steady stream of cash with little personal risk. As I reported in The Franchise, for Bayrock, the deals were equally attractive in that Trump was giving them something priceless— the most marketable brand imaginable for selling luxury high-rises.
And all this came at a time when wealthy Russians were desperately trying to launder hundreds of billions of dollars in flight capital from Russia’s corrupt and volatile Mafia and find a safe haven in the West.
Millian's assertion that Russian buyers were funneled into Trump properties further corroborates my reports in The New Republic, in House of Trump, House of Putin and my Trump Russia Timeline that Trump’s real estate had become a laundromat for the billions in flight capital pouring out of Russia,
The two key predicates that suggest a transaction involves money laundering are, first, that the deal that is an all-cash transaction and, second, that the properties are being bought by anonymous corporate entities such as limited liability corporations.
By 2008, Russian and post-Soviet oligarchs had begun using Western real estate, especially in cities like Miami, New York, and London, as a parking lot for offshore cash. At the same time, the Trump Organization had become notorious for turning a blind eye to buyers who came in to make all-cash purchases that may have come from a suspicious provenance.
Millian, the president of the Russian-American Chamber of Commerce in the United States and the owner of a translation service, once described himself as the Trump Organization’s “exclusive broker” helping Russians buy apartments in Trump buildings.
Millian is also reportedly one of the key sources whose claims about Russian attempts to cultivate Trump were cited in the set of memos compiled by former British intelligence agent Christopher Steele. The Washington Post has reported that Millian told associates he was in touch with George Papadopolous, the Trump campaign’s foreign policy adviser who has pleaded guilty to lying to FBI agents about his contacts with Russians. Papadopolous and Millian were Facebook friends, the Post noted.
Sergei Millian himself is no stranger to controversy. He is a U.S. citizen born in Belarus and the founder of the shadowy Russian-American Chamber of Commerce, which has no known membership roster and appears to exist largely on paper. Court records show that when Millian first arrived in the U.S., he went by the name Siarhei Kukuts and later Sergei Kukuts. On a 2009 resume for Sergei Kukuts posted online, he described himself as having worked in the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs as an interpreter and translator.
Multiple reports, from The Washington Post and Mother Jones and other publications, suggest that Millian regularly bragged about his close ties to top Russian officials. “Usually if I meet top people in the Russian government, they invite me, say, to the Kremlin for the reception, of course I have a chance to talk to some presidential advisers and some top people,” Millian said.
He also claimed to be a conduit between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin. During the 2016 campaign, Millian reportedly told George Papadopoulos that the Russians had compromising material on Hillary Clinton—and he was later cited as a key source in the Steele dossier, though he denies this.
He told ABC News about the Russians’ affinity for working with Trump and pointed to “hundreds of millions of dollars that [Trump] received from interactions with Russian businessmen.”
Millian added that Trump “likes Russia because he likes beautiful Russian ladies — talking to them, of course. And he likes to be able to make lots of money with Russians.”
Despite—or perhaps because of—his murky background, Millian managed to embed himself in Trump’s orbit. His own social media posts and press interviews show him meeting with Trump associates, attending campaign events, and promoting Trump’s brand abroad.
The 2008 Hollywood, Florida meeting that Millian described wasn’t an isolated episode—it was part of a broader pattern. In House of Trump, House of Putin, I documented how Trump properties across the U.S.—from Manhattan to Sunny Isles Beach, Florida—became magnets for post-Soviet money, often in the form of all-cash purchases by anonymous shell companies:
‘Trump specifically marketed his Sunny Isles, Florida, apartment units in Moscow, St. Petersburg, and other venues designed to attract Russian organized crime money,’ said Kenneth McCallion, a former federal prosecutor and New York attorney who specializes in human rights, money laundering, and civil racketeering cases.
A Reuters investigation did not find any wrongdoing by Trump or his real estate organization. In response to media inquiries, Trump Organization lawyer Alan Garten commented that the firm did not track nationalities of buyers and that the company rarely plays a role in recruiting buyers.
However, the dubious character of Trump’s clientele was so obvious that the Financial Times suggested that the Russian American Chamber of Commerce, headed by Sergei Millian, who claimed to be Trump’s exclusive broker for Trump properties in Russia and the former Soviet Union, was the kind of Russian operation that harkened back to Cold War–style espionage.
Konstantin Borovoi, who was president of Russia’s first commodities exchange, agrees that Millian’s chamber of commerce is reminiscent of the kind of practices one saw from the secret services at the height of the Cold War. “These institutions have been revived and developed,” he said. “The chamber of commerce institutions are the visible part of the agent network . . . Russia has spent huge amounts of money on this.”
In Moscow, of course, since the demise of the Soviet Union, the KGB had been replaced by the FSB, but that did not mean its vaunted tradecraft had been lost or in any way diminished. To the contrary, the Kremlin was now being run by a career KGB operative—in fact, one whose life’s goal was to revive Russia’s shattered dreams of empire. To that end, at almost every turn there is evidence of the Russians throwing the KGB textbook at Trump, trying to entangle him and compromise him in as many ways as possible. And in Trump, the Russians seemed to have found the perfect mark.
In 2016, Trump told reporters, “I have nothing to do with Russia.” But figures like Millian, Cohen, Felix Sater, and many others paint a different picture.
Trump didn’t just “have something to do” with Russia—his survival depended on it.
If you have tips, leads, or insights, please reach out—I am always looking for new information. And don’t forget to comment and share your thoughts!
For the complete story on how Trump became a Russian asset, buy House of Trump, House of Putin and/or American Kompromat. And don’t miss my latest book, Den of Spies!
House of Trump, House of Putin
The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia
American Kompromat
How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery
Den of Spies
Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House
.....and yet, our incompetent media failed us at every point. They failed to clarify the message, failed to do their due diligence in reporting, & dropped the story rather quickly. Then to add insult to injury they allowed Dump to take over the narrative & claim it was a hoax without refuting it.
Thank you both for this excellent overview of DJT's financial relationship with Russia over the years. It's all about 'follow the money'....
Nothing has changed much since his first 80's trip except that he's now POTUS. (Heaven help us!)
Having read Craig's books I know how diligent an investigative reporter he is. Olga, I watch you regularly & with Zev and long admired your depth of knowledge! Keep up the great work!